


Merlyn's Magic

by superscar



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Reality, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2757254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superscar/pseuds/superscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years ago, Merlyn's Magic disappeared during a storm in the North China Sea.  Since that day, Oliver Queen has been looking for two of those missing, presumed dead:  Tommy Merlyn, his best friend from boyhood and Laurel Lance, Oliver's estranged girlfriend, who inexplicably got on the boat that day as well.  The search has taken him all over the world, but the first real answers could be right under his nose, on his father's computer at Queen Consolidated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Merlyn’s Magic  
by scarlet (superscar)

“Remember, this was before he got the haircut,” Robert Queen’s executive assistant reminded Felicity as she picked up the phone, “Queen Consolidated. Mr. Queen’s office. Jean speaking… Mr. Queen isn’t in at the moment, could I take a message? Hello? Rude.” She hung up and turned back to Felicity. “Sooo…?”

“I don’t cheat on my boyfriends no matter what their hair looks like,” Felicity hoped that just answering the question would put an end to the discussion. Everyone played this game once in awhile, putting themselves in Laurel Lance’s shoes.

“Prude,” Jean declared her. “So is that why you took this job, you’re an Oliver girl?”

Felicity’s jaw dropped in shock, “I… that’s not. I wouldn’t!”

Jean was so amused she almost couldn’t answer her next call. “I’m kidding!” she said as she transferred the caller to voicemail, “I know you’re some tech genius out of M.I.T… Still obviously an Oliver girl, though.”

Like there was something wrong with that? If the fact that Oliver Queen looked like walking sex wasn’t enough, he’d spent the last two or three years since Merlyn’s Magic disappeared physically going through island upon island in the China Sea looking for his best friend and girlfriend. Despite the world at large thinking that they ran away together. Despite the Chinese government throwing him in prison a time or ten.

He’d dropped an easy ten million tracing every possible lead and hiring ex-military to both help and train. Unfortunately for him, every move he made was interesting to the world at large. Probably because he was rich, ridiculously cut and Jean wasn’t wrong about his haircut. It made for a positive change. 

Most of his down time seemed to be spent avoiding the paparazzi. He’d been remarkably good at ignoring their questions, for the most part, but they just kept needling him about Laurel and Tommy and their possible relationship behind his back. 

Everyone remembered when he finally snapped. “I don’t fucking care!” The media outlets had bleeped out the f-bomb, but youtube had the whole thing in epic glory. “Laurel and Tommy are either on the bottom of the ocean, on an island or in a Chinese prison and I’m supposed to give a shit whether or not they were fucking? Get the fuck out of my face.”

The Oliver girls basically lost their collective shit over that one. Laurel’s faithfulness was irrelevant to him, he just wanted her alive.

That was some epic romantic bullshit, right there.

Of course, the Tommy girls would point out the fact that Oliver wasn’t exactly the most faithful boyfriend in the history of the world. Despite all he said, when he wasn’t parachuting onto strange islands, he had a tendency to bang his way through a high percentage of Starling’s womenfolk.

Felicity didn’t really see why he had to remain faithful to a cheating girlfriend who’d been legally declared dead, but she wasn’t the one jumping into bed with the guy.

Unfortunately.

Not that she would, or anything. Given an opportunity. He was probably a raging jackass. Definitely not emotionally available.

“So what did he break this time?” Jean interrupted Felicity’s internal protection mechanism, rejecting Oliver Queen before someone could remind her they’d never actually met.

“I don’t know, I just work here.” She got an email, she showed up. That was the gig. Robert Queen wasn’t exactly tech savvy. Arguably, that was what she was for. The whole of the IT Department, really, but she was his first personal hire after finally admitting to himself that the internet was something that had to be dealt with head on, so he had a tendency to rely on her for every little thing. “Maybe he misplaced a couple million dollars again.”

Jean just shuddered. Rich people, man. The phone rang and she rolled her eyes, moving ever so slowly toward it. “Mr. Queen’s office, please hold.” She hit the button and turned back to Felicity. “So how are you liking the place so far?”

“Coffee’s decent.”

“True enough,” she took her caller off hold, “Thanks for holding, how can I help you?”

There was a ding on Felicity’s android. A text from Robert Queen: **Get started without me. Missing files starting 10/09.**

“I apologize, Mrs. Queen, he isn’t in the office at the moment, have you tried his mobile?” Jean asked, pronouncing it ‘mo-bile’ as absolutely no one in the United States did, ever. “Hello?” 

“I’m just going to go in –“ Felicity gestured toward Mr. Queen’s desk in the inner sanctum.

“She thinks I’m screwing her husband,” Jean answered the question Felicity hadn’t asked or wanted to know the answer to. “I tried to be nice for a year. Over it.”

Felicity suspected that Jean would soon be over her job as well. Moira Queen was a stone cold, scary ass bitch. For her own sake, it would probably be safer for Jean if she actually was riding the boss on a semi-regular basis.

It seemed too late to offer an opinion on that front, though. So her response couldn’t strictly be defined as words, so much as mumblslurrage with pointing to add meaning on her intended escape route.

Sitting down in front of Robert Queen’s computer was a relief.

Really, sitting down in front of any computer. The sitting wasn’t even necessary. She just felt like life was much straight forward with a computer within reach, giving her all the information she needed to answer all the questions that popped into her head.

The problem, when she pulled up the files, was immediately obvious. Starting October 3rd until November 14th, all Robert Queen’s files were missing. Gone. It was as though he had taken more than a month vacation, which was practically LOL level hilarity. Such a big chunk of files had to be an accident, and yet an easy pull from the recycling folder wasn’t an option.

They were gone. On purpose, but the job wasn’t done by a hacker. Or at least not a good one. So it wasn’t long before the files started popping back up and the pattern was immediately obvious. Until October 3, 2009, there were no video files. Strictly speaking, Felicity’s boss hadn’t asked her to make sure that the aforementioned files hadn’t been corrupted…

But that didn’t stop her from opening the first, just to make sure.

The second was general curiosity.

The third, her stomach was in her toes.

“Ms. Smoak?” 

She hadn’t had the time to mentally prepare herself for any contact with the world outside of her own horrifying realization.

“Don’t you _knock?_ ” Felicity snapped, looking up to realize she was yelling at her boss.

Thankfully, this reaction seemed to amuse him. “Not generally to my own office, no,” Robert Queen returned. “I didn’t realize we had anything scheduled.”

“But –“

“Dad,” a new voice interrupted before Felicity could indignantly point out that he’d asked her to be there. “The restaurant said you forgot this.” 

The high stress of the situation was messing with her ability to absorb information. Thankfully, Felicity Smoak’s IQ was in easy genius range, so she picked up on the important factors. 

A. Robert Queen had not asked her to recover these files from his computer, so therefore:  
B. She had recovered incriminating files her boss wanted buried and  
C. If found out, he could have her disappeared or killed or fired and  
D. Oliver Fucking Queen was staring at her.

This was so outside of how she’d imagined this meeting taking place. Just to start, she’d hoped to wear contacts. And not be in the midst of what could easily turn into a life or death situation.

The very last realization to imprint itself into her overly stressed brain was the fact that _Oliver Queen_ had had his father’s phone. The phone that had sent her the text messages. And from the significant look he was giving her, it didn’t seem like anything could be blamed on autocorrect.

He’d gotten her to spy on Queen Consolidated and if he thought he was leaving this office without saving her life, his sweet ass could kiss the results goodbye.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Queen. I’m just updating your firewall, if you and your son would like to gossip amongst yourselves, or whatever men do, for a few more minutes.” Felicity kept typing with deliberately powerful strokes. _Confidence_ , she told herself, _really sell it._

“You heard her, Dad. Break out the whiskey and cigars.”

“Gross. Please do that in the hallway. Your office is my office until I get this sorted out. Sorry, Mr. Queen.”

“I don’t keep the good stuff in the office anyway,” the CEO returned, but his good humor seemed to be waning quickly as he checked his watch. “I have a meeting in ten minutes, Ms. Smoak. I thought all our updates had to be scheduled 24 hours in advance?”

Felicity’s fingers were firing over the keys at the highest rate she could possibly achieve with accuracy, which was surprisingly high, considering the fact that by all rights she should be shaking to the tips of her fingers. Steady hands in life and death situations. Who knew? She could put it on her resume if she managed to get out of the building with her life.

“That is true for routine updates, Mr. Queen, but there was someone attempting to break into your private files.” That someone was her, in this case, but if Oliver Queen wasn’t going to volunteer that tidbit, she surely wouldn’t. “I assume that you would prefer the contents of this computer and everything in Applied Sciences remain on our server only?” She didn’t stop typing. Obviously, he wouldn’t want anyone hacking into his computer. He kept his murdery secrets there. Really not well hidden at all.

“I assume Jones will update me himself when he gets to the meeting?”

“You have a meeting with my boss?” Felicity asked.

“All the department heads,” Mr. Queen confirmed. “They’ll be here in… seven minutes. Though Jones likes to be early. You could learn something from him, son.”

“Ass kissing,” Felicity muttered.

Oliver choked back a laugh as Robert Queen shot her a look. He’d be wishing the worst he had to deal with was her smart mouth by the end of the day.

“Sorry, was that out loud?” Blood was pounding in Felicity’s ears as she hit the final ENTER. She did it. 

And now, the exit plan.

She grabbed a pen and notepad from the desk just as the elevator dinged distantly down the hall. “There will be a prompt. This is your new password, Mr. Queen. Obviously, you shouldn’t share it. It will let you pick a new one. Please don’t use any version of Thea’s birthdate.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself.”

Felicity was out of the chair in an instant just as Jones Herschel, her boss, not her _supervisor_ , but uber-bossman guy rounded the corner and greeted Jean. Naturally, Felicity chose that particular moment to knock the CEO’s pen cup onto the floor.

For a second, she just stared at those stupid purple pens, delaying her plan from all over the floor.

“I’ll get those.”

“What?” She asked, blinking at the Queen Consolidated logo that was literally threatening to kill her. Look at the pens, being all mightier. Pithy bitches.

“You should go,” Oliver repeated. “I’ll pick up the pens.”

Oliver Queen was totally trying to save her. Because she had information he wanted, sure, but she’d heard of relationships built on less.

“Right, I- Okay,” she practically stumbled from the room, running directly into Jones Hershel. Of course. How surreal, to actually be on the processing end of the last day of her life.

“Felicity?” He blinked at her, “I didn’t know you were in this meeting.”

“Bathroom!” she blurted the first excuse that came to her mind, stepping by him as quickly as possible.

“Mr. Hershel,” she heard Oliver’s voice as she hurried past Jean’s desk.

Whether that did the trick, she couldn’t hear as she tried to make a not at all suspicious mad dash for the stairs. 

She didn’t hit an all out sprint until the heavy door to the staircase crashed behind her. She was totally counting it toward her workout. 87 flights were 87 flights. Downhill not counting was totally bull shit anyway. Plus, the fear had to burn up extra calories.

Seven floors down, the alarms went off. A few people trickled onto the staircase with her for another floor before it became a madhouse. Thirteen floors down, the stairs were bottlenecked like the freeway. Plus, she thought her ears would probably be ringing for the rest of her hopefully very long life.

Fifteen floors down, a hand reached through the door and pulled her onto the 45th floor. For some reason, the thought occurred to her that it was way too high to survive a jump, as though she wasn’t exactly the type of klutz to kill herself falling three and a half feet.

But it wasn’t a member of the Queen security detail escorting her off the staircase, but Oliver Queen himself. So instead of doing the smart thing, wrenching her hand away from him and running, she found herself stepping closer. Her weakness for a pretty face really would be the death of her. Un _believable._

He started talking, but she could hear nothing he said. Felicity gave legitimate thought to whether the blue of his eyes were really that mindboggling before she remembered that there was actually an alarm ringing in her ears.

_Thank God!_

She wasn’t… entirely… crazy. Oliver seemed to realize the alarm problem in the same minute and dragged her to the window. It didn’t solve the problem. She couldn’t hear jack shit.

But there was a tingling in her spine, and she turned around, but there was no one behind her and too late, she saw Oliver Queen gesturing the other direction, outside, where combat boots SLAMMED into the glass at her eye level.

She couldn’t hear the scream that left her lips, but she could feel it vibrate through her body as she dropped to the floor, arms around her head in instinctive self-preservation. Of course, when nothing happened after that and she had to peer out from underneath her arms to find Oliver Queen holding out a hand to help her up, she felt ridiculous.

When she took the time to enjoy the way his hand engulfed hers as he pulled her smoothly to her feet, she felt like an utter moron. A new and distasteful experience.

She was a (mostly) confident, intelligent woman, she could get beyond something simple like the blue of Oliver Queen’s eyes. But seriously, did he wear contacts or something? Orange eye shadow to make them pop? It was practically superhuman. She snatched her hand back from him the second she regained her balance. Because that wasn’t childish at all. Not like it was his fault he was abnormally attractive.

Well, the eye color and generally pleasing facial features weren’t his fault. The fact that he was cut like a diamond? She lay all that blame at his feet. Genetics didn’t mold muscle. But it wasn’t like the average person could afford 15 personal trainers, so really…

Oliver was the first to break away from their little handholding session, which was, first, embarrassing and then confusing when he handed her what basically amounted to a seatbelt sown into weird loops. Until he stepped into his own as though it was a pair of pants.

Panic started to make its way down Felicity’s spine before she had even fully processed what he’d handed her. But then he slipped what she knew to be a carabineer, though she’d only really seen it used in real life as a key chain and her eyes flew to his buddy through the glass, now cutting a circle out of the window with what amounted to a pizza cutter.

They wanted her to mountain gear up and climb a glass building.

There was no fraking way that was ever going to happen. She ran the opposite direction. There was way too much time to think as a person fell to their death. She’d just as soon be shot, thank you very much.

“Felicity!”

Her name, barked at her sharply, was the only thing that let her know the alarms had been stopped. People would be headed back to their desks soon. They would see the gigantic hole in the middle of the building, and probably the commando guy hanging from the roof, he was pretty hard to miss.

“I can protect you!” Oliver promised, running after her, the metal in his new outfit jingling as he went.

“From falling to my death?”

“From my father! You saw something, right? Why do you think I wanted you to get into his computer?”

That brought back all her general indignation with being brought into this without her permission. “Yeah! Thanks for that! You think I woke up this morning wanting to meet Oliver Queen and get murdered?! Right, just your average hump day.”

“You’re not going to get murdered. Fired, maybe.”

Illogically, that only pissed her off more. “I can’t be _fired_ from my first job out of college! Do you know how hard I worked to get here, I graduated –“

“M.I.T., top of your class, 2009,” Oliver interrupted. It sort of knocked the wind from her sails. Oliver Queen had researched _her_. “Let’s start over. Felicity Smoak, I’m Oliver Queen –“

“I know who you are –“

“And I’m here to offer you a new job.”

“You... _What?_ ”

“I’ll pay you two million dollars a year.”

It may have been the first time in her life that thoughts in her head came to a complete stop.

“Clock starts when you jump out that window.”

 

To Be Continued


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not what one might ever describe as a frequent updater. My apologies.

Merlyn’s Magic, Chapter Two  
By scarlet (superscar)

So apparently the answer to the age-old question, “Would you jump out of a skyscraper for two million dollars?” was a big fat yes for Felicity Smoak. Whether or not it would work should the money in question be offered by someone other than Oliver Queen, or the possibility of ending up even dead-er by staying not exist, maybe she wouldn’t.

But this was the situation. At least she was being offered a gigantic upside.

She just had to face basically her worst fear to get to it, and it wasn’t the part where she had to tuck her phone into her underwear.

“I’d recommend not looking down,” Oliver told her as he yanked her toward him with a carabineer. 

If she was more of a physical person, she wouldn’t be able to resist punching him in the face. He wasn’t officially her boss until she went out the window. But that wasn’t her weapon of choice. _“Really?”_ she asked instead, “Is it because of the pee-your-pants-terror or how everything just looks all small and cute and distorts the crap out of reality?”

He attached a rope to her harness and then his own. Then he attached their harnesses together. “You die, I die,” he assured her. Or it could have been assuring, if he hadn’t been one of the most famous adrenaline junkies of her generation.

She could hear co-workers. Former co-workers, really, since she’d just taken another job, filing back to their seats. At any second, she expected loud exclamations about the giant hole in the window and people climbing out the damn thing.

“I have no idea how to do this.”

“Just hang on to me.”

“Really pictured you saying _that_ in different circumstances,” Felicity said. Out loud. For Oliver Queen to hear. She really was just living the ultimate nightmare.

He just looked at her as her mind spun with what she could say to undo the damage when he wrapped an arm around her waist and jumped out the window.

Felicity had no idea if she was screaming since all of her attention was on the harness cutting into her thighs as it pulled her up the side of the building. “Her” rope was basically just for show. It wasn’t that difficult to avoid looking down when she could just as easily stare at Oliver’s biceps as he hauled them toward the roof of Queen Consolidated.

At first, she attempted to help, trying to at least use her feet to walk up the building the way he was doing, but she couldn’t even reach. But then, given her footwear, it would probably be considered a win if she could manage to get to the top without dropping a shoe. The realization that her heels could probably legitimately kill a pedestrian really made it difficult to enjoy the Oliver Queen arm show.

When he sprung effortlessly up and over the edge of the building, leaving her dangling, Felicity decided she was totally over Oliver Queen. Then not one, but four hands reached over the side of the building to offer her a hand up. Between Oliver and his commando friend, Felicity felt like a small child jumping through the air in the hands of her really super hot dads. The metaphor kind of fell to pieces in her mind, what with her new infatuation for one and long term, one-sided, complicated relationship status with the other.

When her heels clicked against the concrete on the roof, she was pretty sure that she was in love with both of them and her lack of consistency didn’t even bother her.

“Thank you,” she breathed, resisting the urge to kiss the ground beneath her feet.

Oliver opened his mouth to answer, but frowned instead, reaching into his pocket for his phone as he started dropping his gear.

“You’re welcome,” the commando answered instead and Felicity got to study him up close for the first time. He was a beautifully cut black man with a relaxed smile and disappointing wedding band. In spite of this unfortunate jewelry choice, Felicity decided that next time she’d be watching _him_ do the climbing.

“Felicity Smoak,” she offered her name and a hand, which he took immediately.

“Digg!” Oliver hissed, “Let’s go!” 

“John Diggle,” Digg said with one last shake of her hand and nod before turning toward a machine that Felicity, for some reason, hadn’t thought to relate to their presence on the roof. The question how they were leaving hadn’t occurred to her to process. _“No,”_ she breathed, watching as Diggle jumped aboard the chopper on the helipad. 

“Problem?” Oliver asked, the look in his eyes daring her to call chicken.

“Should there be?” she returned, determined to pretend that heights weren’t a fear just slightly outranked by dismemberment on her list of horrors.

“After you,” he gestured just as the blades started moving, reminding her that dismemberment wasn’t exactly off the table in the scenario. Only the knowledge that darting toward the big metallic grasshopper like a scared little bunny would surely make her look even more ridiculous than she had been managing for the past hour (God, had it even _been_ an hour yet?) kept her walking at a steady pace.

“OLIVER QUEEN!”

Both of them spun toward the traditional entrance to the roof, where three members of the Queen Consolidated Security Team were coming through the door, fire-arms raised.

Oliver stepped directly in front of her. “Gentlemen. What’s the problem?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to detain you, at Mr. Queen’s request.”

Pressing a button on his phone, he lifted it to his lips, “Call Dad.”

“Oliver!” Mr. Queen’s voice made Felicity jump.

“Pretty extreme reaction to not answering your calls, Dad.”

“You know that’s not what this is!”

“Do I? Why don’t you explain it, Father.”

“Take me off speaker.”

Pressing a button, Oliver brought the phone up to his ear. “Didn’t want to spill your secrets in front of your own security? What a spectacular new low.”

There was a pause, then, “Fine, we’ll discuss it inside.” Oliver pulled the phone away from his ear and approached the security guards. “He wants to talk to you.”

Before Felicity could process the idea that Oliver was actually agreeing with his murderous father after _everything_ that had happened, the security guard took the phone. A mistake, as it turned out.

In the time it took Felicity’s jaw to drop from her teeth to her sternum, Oliver Queen incapacitated three trained professionals.

Most likely, what he did was the result of years upon years of some kind of mixed martial arts training, but from Felicity’s perspective, it looked more like the freaking tango. He took the hand reaching out for his phone, twirled the first guy directly into the second guy and Rocketted the hell out of the third guy. Strictly Badass Ballroom. A comparison she intended to take with her to the grave, hopefully eighty plus years in the future.

Then he turned away, as though they no longer interested him. Though they weren’t _dead_ and they still had _guns_. Felicity felt like she was in a movie, but instead of shouting at the screen about how absolutely ridiculous it is to believe someone could actually _forget_ about a gun, she was frozen on the spot watching it happen.

In spite of her absolute certainty that the security guards would rise to their feet like zombies and shoot Oliver Queen’s beautiful head full of holes, they remained on the ground in apparent surrender.

It wasn’t until she turned around to find John Diggle holding a gun on them that she started breathing again. That, at least, made sense. Maybe they weren’t about to die, after all.

Unfortunately, she didn’t feel like she was any further away from a nervous breakdown.

“Let’s go,” Oliver took her by the arm and forced her head much lower than necessary to avoid the swing of the blades above their heads. She wasn’t actually sure she was tall enough to hit them if she actually tried, but was far too freaked the fuck out to complain.

It was a massive step onto the helicopter, but Oliver boosted her up effortlessly, saving her the embarrassment of asking for either a hand up or, worse, some sort of child’s ladder. Of course, then he basically placed her into a chair and buckled her seatbelt for her, making her feel like quite the official adult.

_Two million dollars,_ played in her head, over and over again, as she reminded herself that the jumping out a window part was over. All she had to do was close her eyes and forget that she was in a helicopter. 

“Ready?” Oliver asked, as though he knew that she was about seven seconds away from hurling.

She only nodded. Speech was absolutely beyond her.

“Good,” he smiled, then, placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder for a second and climbed into the driver’s seat.

_Oliver Freaking Queen_ was going to be flying her to her death.

Officially.

Digg didn’t appear to share her concern, sitting back casually on the edge of the helicopter floor, his feet dangling from the edge. Apparently, the idea of hanging over an abyss of nothing wasn’t particularly worrisome to a bad ass soldier.

And she’d be damned if she let them know exactly how worrisome it was to Felicity Smoak. 

So she plastered on a face that she hoped looked like serenity and pulled her phone out from the back of her panties. Not like she particularly wanted to see her death coming anyway.

She didn’t look up again until the helicopter came to a full and complete stop. 

John and Oliver were gone by the time she took a break from her phone. She wasn’t surprised. Though she hadn’t really heard them climb out on a conscious level, she’d been busy, after all.

She appeared to be in some kind of warehouse. One without a ceiling, she’d imagine, or she wasn’t exactly sure how they’d magic’d their way into it.

At a distance, she could hear their voices and the whole thing smacked of the time when, at eight, she’d adopted a new kitten and waited for it to slowly make its way out of the box before she’d smothered it with love until it ran back in.

Somehow, she imagined Oliver Queen wouldn’t handle it quite the same way.

She hadn’t really imagined Oliver Queen handling her at all.

Well, that was a lie. She hadn’t _realistically expected_ to be handled. In her imagination, he’d handled the crap out of her.

And that was before she’d seen him scale the side of a building and put down a security team.

She was a little curious how long he would be willing to just leave her here, since he didn’t seem like someone particularly given to patience.

Of course, that was something they had in common, she realized as she climbed out of the flying deathmobile and wandered toward the sound of a female voice.

“-bring back here, out of the blue –“

… quite obviously talking about Felicity.

“Umm… hi?” Felicity said as she rounded the corner to find herself in a room that brought new meaning to multi-purpose. It had desks, phones and computers, so it could have been an office space, probably was, at one point, but there was a wall of weapons and it seemed like someone had built a complicated series of obstacles without bothering to move the furniture. 

Felicity looked around at the available seating and then back over to the three people in the room, now staring at her. “I’m sorry… do you happen to know which one is mine?” she asked, gesturing toward the desks.

“Whichever you want,” came a strained answer from _above her._ Startled, she jumped to the side, looked up and froze.

Oliver Queen was suspended in mid air, perhaps through the miraculous use of fairy dust, but seemingly using his muscular strength to stay perfectly horizontal. She could see every ripple in his back because he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

The heavens had, in fact, opened up and were smiling down upon her.

Felicity wasn’t sure how much time passed before she thought to check to be sure her mouth was closed. 

It was at that point that she caught John Diggle’s eye and it was obvious that he had missed absolutely nothing. She kind of resented the fact that he was making her feel ashamed of what was basically the most awesome moment of her life. What was she supposed to be, some kind of asexual superhuman? What the frak ever.

But back to business. “I’ll take these two,” she pointed out two desks across from each other, already imagining the glow of the monitors. She’d have them facing each other, _Avengers_ style. Yes, she’d have to turn her head, but where else would she have such an amazing view of Oliver Queen defying normal laws of gravity?

Now that she was passed the window jumping and helicopter riding, this was basically her dream job.

God, she hoped she wasn’t sleeping. She took a subtle glance at her hands, which appeared completely normal. It was difficult to see your hands in dreams. She’d read that somewhere. Reading! Another sign of a dream, reading was impossible. Felicity yanked out her phone and read “CONFIRMATION EMAIL” in her Inbox. 

100% living the dream.

Oliver Queen dropped to the floor right in front of her.

That probably bumped it up to 110%.

XXX

Oliver Queen didn’t seem like the type to stand on office policy, so when he ushered her into another room to discuss the terms of her employment away from the watchful eyes of John and, from the close personal contact, the person that she could only hope was Mrs. Diggle, Felicity was surprised.

“I need you to tell me everything you saw today.”

For a brief moment, Felicity thought he was testing her, that he literally wanted her to recount, verbatim, everything that had happened since he’d walked into his father’s office. To prove her brainpower, perhaps? But as she remembered the first time she saw him, what, exactly, she’d been doing, his meaning clarified. He wanted to know what she’d seen on his father’s computer.

“It’s like you don’t even know me,” Felicity sighed, pulling out her phone as she waited for his reaction. The twitch of his lips was subtle, but she loved it. This man was going to be absolutely impossible to get over at close range. “Take a look yourself.”

When he took the phone from her hand and looked at what she was handing him, his eyebrows shot up and he stared at her. “These are the actual files.”

“I created a backdoor, stored them on the company website while their server was down and then downloaded them on the… spinny thing – _chopper!_ Helicopter. That’s another word for it.”

“He doesn’t know you have these.”

“Well, he will. When I email him about it. I figure he’s less likely to kill me if he thinks that he can go down for something like this…”

Concern was growing in Oliver’s eyes, but she realizes that he could only possibly have guesses about what she had seen until he looked at them himself.

“Watch, then we’ll talk,” she said. “I have to open the doors for the delivery guys anyway.”

She could tell that surprised him, but he just watched her silently. As though he was already privy to the fact that Felicity felt a powerful compulsion to fill silences in almost exclusively counterproductive ways. “I can’t find them without a serious upgrade. Have you seen the office, Ninja Warrior? No, you can’t see it because you buried it like a dog working out on his bone.” Felicity grimaced. “Okay, that sounded… I don’t even _know_.”

Oliver still wasn’t saying anything and Felicity’s heart was pounding as she tried to think of a way to extricate her mouth from the situation. “But they’ll be here! Soon. With computers. Nice, nice, practically _orgasmic_ computers. Not, like, in a porn way. Not that it wouldn’t play, but the positioning would make it weird. Monitor position! In the office! Not like, positioning in the porn. I’m pretty sure all of that is weird, though you’d probably know better than me… Aaaand, I promise, I am shutting up in 3…2…1.” She closed her mouth. God, she hoped he would save her from herself soon.

“Who are you looking for?” He practically whispered the question, but Felicity finally got to a breath for a moment, relieved by the interruption. “You said you couldn’t find _them_ without a serious upgrade.”

“Laurel Lance and Tommy Merlyn.” She didn’t say ‘Duh.’ Felicity wasn’t a five year old, but she felt that her tone conveyed the message. Why else did Oliver Queen hire anyone to do anything? Other than a maid, obviously. If he didn’t have a maid in at least twice a week, he was doing rich wrong, in Felicity’s opinion.

“Then you know – “

“Follow every lead, spare no expense, leave no data unsearched… Is that the general theme you were headed to next?”

Oliver just smiled. “Welcome aboard, Ms. Smoak. Is there anything I can tell you that you don’t already know?”

Felicity smiled back at him. “Just watch the videos.”

XXX

 

While Oliver settled in to watch the files on her phone, Felicity wandered back out to the “Office.” “John, could you help me out with the boxes?” she asked, then found her hand searching her underwear for the phone she’d just left in her new boss’s hand. So alas, it was no longer in her undies. And her tablet was back at her desk at Queen Consolidated. She was flying blind. “Where’s the front door of this place?” How do people survive without blue prints?”

“I did just come in that way, so I could probably just access my short term memory.”

Felicity had a habit, some might call terrible, but she saw as unavoidable, of surveying a room’s toys before she ventured to look at the people. If she had, she might have noticed the newcomer.

“Andy Diggle,” he held his hand out to her, and Felicity took it as he grinned at her. He was adorable. 

“Sorry! Andy, this is Felicity Smoak,” John trotted over, tugging his lady with him. “Felicity, my wife Lyla and my brother, Andy.”

It was impossible not to stare at them up close, comparing the brothers. Andy’s face was more open and when he smiled, the force of it doubled the power of his large brown eyes. Naturally, he, too, was wearing a wedding ring.

“So this is a family business?” she asked.

“The Diggle brand has proven trustworthy,” Andy said with a smile. “Mostly thanks to my brother.”

“He talks about trust, but all you hear is bullshit,” John sidestepped the praise.

“This one has trouble taking a compliment,” Lyla said, wrapping an arm around her husband. “Isn’t that right, handsome?”

When Digg shifted uncomfortably, obviously trying not to contradict her outright without proving her point, Felicity couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Not you too,” he said with a sigh.

“You’re surrounded, Johnny.”

“Felicity?” She jumped as Oliver came up behind her.

“Jeez, people! Put some stomp into your step!”

“Sorry. Someone keeps calling. The number’s not in your phone.”

Even as he spoke, it popped up again.

“ _This_ is why I need to upgrade the system. We could be tracing this as we speak.” Felicity accepted the call, putting it on speaker. “Hello?”

“Felicity Smoak? This is Glade Messenger Service. We are outside of the address you gave, but the location appears to be abandoned.”

“Really? What address do you have?” she asked, her mind firing rapidly as she turned toward every exit in turn.

On the other end of the line, the man’s voice fired off the address she’d found on the plane when she’d pulled up her own location not 20 minutes before.

Her heart jack hammered as Oliver took the phone from her hand, hitting the mute button. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I ordered with your credit card. They don’t know my name. That’s _impossible_.”

Oliver slid his gun from the holster just as the lights went out.


End file.
